Special issueonDesign of Products, Systems and Services for Dependability and Sustainability

The International Journal of Performability Engineering (IJPE) is planning to bring out a special issue on the Design of Products, Systems and Services for Dependability and Sustainability. According to Handbook of Performability Engineering (Ed. Krishna B. Misra, Springer Verlag, 2008), for optimum performance, sustainability requirements should be addressed along with other factors such as quality, reliability, maintenance and safety. The objective is to produce products, systems and services that have built in quality, reliability, maintainability and safety, and are produced through clean production and technologies that result in minimal pollution, require minimum raw materials and energy and safe to dispose off or reuse at the end of their lives.

In today's highly competitive market, performance optimization has become an important factor in attaining competitiveness, profitability and increased customer satisfaction. Combined with the demand and regulatory push for sustainable products, it has become imperative to analyse and optimise systems performance over their life-cycle: from the design stage to the disposal stage (from cradle to grave) including end of life treatment such as reconditioning and reuse or recycle.

We invite original research papers, methodological papers, case studies, reviews and short communications on the theme of this special issue. Topics may include but are not limited to:

Design for Dependable and Sustainable Products and Services

Sustainability and Dependability Assessment at the Design Stage, Metrics for Sustainability and Dependability Assessment

Design of Sustainable Distribution Systems with Forward and Reverse Flows

A two-step process shall be used to publish this Special Issue of the IJPE. As a first step, authors must submit an extended abstract of 300-500 words to the Guest Editors by e-mail. Thereafter, the guest editors would provide feedbacks to the authors of selected abstracts. Through their feedback, they will guide authors to develop and submit full papers (word file) for peer review and potential publication within this SI of the IJPE. Full papers should be approximately 6000-8500 words. Short communications should be approximately 2000-2500 words. While communicating the full paper to the guest editors, please send a cc to the Editor-in-Chief of IJPE (kbmisra@gmail.com) for formal acknowledgement of the paper and copyright formality. Papers with maximum length of not more than 10-12 printed pages and submitted in the IJPE format will save time in processing. Please use the following page setup: Paper size A4 (8.27" x 11.69") with margins set as: Top-2.8", Bottom-1.2", Left-1.63", Right-1.6" as the journal size is (7"x 9.5"). Upon receipt of full papers, reviewers will be selected to provide peer reviews. Only upon the receipt and acceptance of the revised papers based on reviewer's and the guest editor's feedback, papers will be published in this SI.

June 15, 2013: Submit extended abstracts of 300-500 words.

July 15, 2013: Feedback by guest editors to authors of the abstracts.

September 15, 2013: Submit full papers of 6000-8500 words.

December 15, 2013: Peer review process and provision of feedback to authors.